Reconstruction of skeletal muscle tissue lost by traumatic injury, tumor ablation, or functional damage due to myopathies is hindered by the lack of available functional muscle tissue substitutes (Bach et al. (2004) Skeletal muscle tissue engineering, J. Cell Mol. Med. 8, 413-422). Only a limited degree of functional restoration is provided by muscle transplantation or transposition techniques.
One approach to addressing muscle tissue reconstruction is to engineer a new tissue (Saxena et al. (1999) Skeletal muscle tissue engineering using isolated myoblasts on synthetic biodegradable polymers: preliminary studies, Tissue Eng 5, 525-532; Payumo et al. (2002) Tissue engineering skeletal muscle for orthopaedic applications, Clin. Orthop. Relat Res. S228-S242; Powell et al. (2002) Mechanical stimulation improves tissue-engineered human skeletal muscle, Am. J. Physiol Cell Physiol 283, C1557-C1565). In generating engineered skeletal muscle tissue, it is preferable to mimic native skeletal muscle construction, with its highly-oriented fibers of fused mononucleated muscle cells. The ability to efficiently organize muscle cells to form aligned myotubes in vitro would greatly benefit efforts in skeletal muscle tissue engineering.